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The quiet leafy enclaves of Bloomsbury are not often haunted by spirits from other realms, let alone long-dead Egyptian magician-priests. This summer, I gave a course on Egyptian magic, and learned as much as I taught!

There are some truly remarkable pieces, including a Taweret figurine so perfectly polished that it might be made of molten metal (see above), a 4th century BC statue of Hapy so colossal the roof on the Sainsbury Exhibition Gallery (in which Sunken Cities is housed) had to be raised to accommodate it, and (my personal favourite) a Horus cippus (called 'Horus-on-crocodiles' for some reason) which perfectly illustrates the decline in hieroglyphic literacy by this period

Review of the brilliant Death on the Nile exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. All in all, a triumphant exploration of the life and light that Egyptians saw in death, a masterful display of highlights of a brilliant collection, and a thoughtful presentation of the work of conservators and restorers in the study of Egyptology.

Now, while you'll still see the obligatory mummy and coffin and a canopic jar or four, you can also get an immediate impression of the academic value of the collection, including photographs from the archives which show Professor Garstang at work in Egypt, and a display of his notebooks. Showing the objects alongside archival objects which illustrate the context in which they were found is another way in which the new museum space underlines how important this collection is. There are some serious treasures in there, and now it's easy to find them for yourself.

It is the monumental scale of the pyramids that entrances. Their sheer size, etched against the horizon, is one of the enduring images of ancient Egypt. Had the Giza pyramids been the size of a small bungalow, would they have inspired the same wild devotion? Probably not.

The job of any monarch involves a great deal of both domestic and foreign travel, and neither Ramesses nor Elizabeth is an exception. It’s impossible to document how many domestic and foreign trips each has taken, but consider this interesting detail: neither had a passport until 1974. In ancient Egypt such documents did not exist, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that the ruler who received a passport was Queen Elizabeth, right?

In ancient Egyptian literature, the crocodile is a fearsome, and feared creature. He is the fate that awaits the unwary fisherman and washerman

He’s even the topic of a whole category of Egyptian magical ‘water’ spells - in fact, I wrote my PhD on those very spells. In these spells, the crocodile is such a great danger that he is often only referred to as 'the one who is on the water' - giving name to something conferred on it too much power.

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